RUSSIA: Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky will not press criminal charges against a cellmate who attacked him with a knife, Interfax news agency quoted one of his legal team as saying yesterday.
The tycoon's lawyer said he needed stitches after a fellow inmate at his Siberian prison camp slashed him with a cobbler's knife while he slept. Prison authorities said no knife was involved and Khodorkovsky just had a scratch on his nose.
"Khodorkovsky has refused to press criminal charges against the person who wounded him," Interfax quoted one of his lawyers, Natalya Terekhova, as saying. "We will respect his wishes."
Founder of the Yukos oil company and once Russia's richest man, Khodorkovsky is serving eight years for fraud and tax evasion. He says he was framed by enemies in the Kremlin who felt he was becoming too powerful. Officials say he is a corrupt businessman who was convicted in a fair trial.
Ms Terekhova said Khodorkovsky had been moved out of the prison sick bay and back into the barracks he shares with dozens of other inmates.
Khodorkovsky's supporters say they believe the Kremlin is trying to break his spirit and was behind the assault, though they have produced no hard evidence to support this.
"In the prison everything is observed around the clock and without an order from above such an attack would not be possible," Germany's Focus magazine quoted Leonid Nevzlin, one of Khodorkovsky's closest business partners, as saying.
"Even before this, everything was done to make Khodorkovsky's life in jail a hell," Focus quoted Mr Nevzlin as saying.
Prison officials said the attack, on Thursday night, was the result of an argument between Khodorkovsky and his cellmate.
Khodorkovsky's 2003 arrest and a legal assault on his company alarmed investors. It also strengthened a view in the West that President Vladimir Putin was clamping down on political and economic freedoms. Investor confidence has since bounced back, helped by vibrant stock markets and high prices for Russia's main exports, oil and gas.